In the computer programming arts, it is common to incorporate a processing loop that repeats a computation or logical operation until some criterion is satisfied. For example, a loop can be set up to run a virus checker against a set of received email messages, one after the other, until the end of that inbox list is reached.
While that loop is being executed, however, there is no application programming interface or other programming construct built into available platforms to view the progress of the processing in the loop, other than manual debugging. Thus, a programmer or user invoking a loop to virus-check a set of emails as noted will have to wait until the received email list is exhausted before an indication that the loop is presented, or will have to prepare an additional portion of separate code to attempt to monitor loop progress. In the interval before the loop is complete, the programmer or user may not be able to determine how far into the received email list the virus check has proceeded, without preparing additional code simply for that purpose.
It may be desirable to provide methods and systems that can automatically generate a progress notification in a software loop as part of the programming syntax, application programming interface, or other platform or programming resource.